Anthropological Learning

During the term we have discussed various topics and concepts that will help me in understanding the social life we live in. Culture is giving meaning to experiences that are passed on and shared. Our culture affects how we perceive others and our beliefs. In my opinion culture is the basis of our moral conduct. The cultures we belong to or associate with are not permanent, they are constantly changing. As they get passed down people change their culture in order to accommodated the society in which they live in. Our culture maybe seen as natural from the inside but for outsider it seems arbitrary. Learning about culture is important because in order to understand other people you need to understand their culture.
It is important to understand other cultures because people need to empathize with other’s believes in order to understand their needs. For example when I work in hospital as a nurse, I must understand that someone may not believe in euthanasia because of the culture they come from. When you have an ethnocentric way of thinking it inhibits on how well you relate to others and it would inhibit me from helping and fulfilling their needs as a health-care provider. If I do not understand other’s culture and their set of believes, I will fail at my job. It is important that people have a relativist point of view because even though you may not agree with someone's believes you have to understand the culture that they live in is different, and therefore everyone’s believes are right.
The concept of personhood varies from society to society. Understanding these variations is important in my life because we live in a world where I will have to work with people that come from different personhoods. Even though our society has an egocentric self point of view, in order to work in the field of nursing you are expect to change from being egocentric to sociocentric. You are expected to do so because nursing is a career were you must learn how to work and rely on others. The concept of egocentrism also has it’s positive aspects. I feel that people sometimes need to focus on their on personal goals and be competitive in order to have motivation to succeed. The negative aspects of living in a egocentric society is that we become to worried about our individuals needs and we forget about our society. We are constantly competing against each other which causes us to never learn to develop our self in terms of how well we coexist with one another. The way we develop our self and our identity determines who we are and how we relate and communicate with others.
The social construction of gender is a huge part of how we develop our self. Instead of treating both females and males equally we differentiated how we socialize and treat them from the minute we know their biological gender. This also creates expectations and norms from society on how each gender should be. Our society teaches females to be helpful, submissive, and easy going. Males in our society are taught to be strong and tough. Males are discouraged to show signs of emotion and pain but females are almost expected to be more emotional and have little pain tolerance. In the American culture when people don’t meet these norms we don’t know how to address this “third” gender like other cultures do, this primarily because we focus and rely on gender roles instead of on preference.
For the most part we are just submitted into these gender roles without us being able to choose what we prefer. We assume that girls should wear pink, like dolls, and want to play tea party without giving her a choice of playing with cars and the color blue. We throw these gender roles at children without realizing that we are doing it. In some cases children are even perceived as being different or even unusual because they break the gender norms. People do not stop to think that males would be biologically attracted to playing with dolls because just like females, they are animals that have a need to look after their young.
Two other crucial aspects to developing our self are race and language. Race is often confused with culture. They are often connected but are not the same. Race is the biological difference in physical characteristics that humans have. Because race and culture are often seen as the same thing we associate and develop ourselves on the basis of race. We tend to develop into these stereotypical norms of race because that is what we have been taught to do. Some people are even proud to have these norms. Language is how we often emphasis these norms and stereotypical ideas. We relate the word “black” with being negative, while we associate “white” with being pure and clean. We also refer to things as being female or male in languages. Him, and her, el and ella, every languages makes this distinct point of differentiating between male and female.
In process of learning about how all these aspects create the self, I realized that once we stop making assumption about how people should be, we can then learn how to treat each other as equals. We can overcome racial and gender inequalities if we stop expecting people to fit into norms and expectations we have. All these concepts have made me realize my own preconceived notations about culture, race, and gender. I have been limiting my thinking to the assumptions I have of people. Now I will be more aware of not expecting people to be and act a certain way because of the norms that are implemented by society. All these concepts can be used in my personal life because how we socialize is affected by how we identify ourselves and how we identify others in our society. If we always expect people to fit into the norms we will never learn to appreciate the diversity our world has to offer.
The construction of social hierarchy also puts limits on developing a society. Like everything else social hierarchy has different levels in different societies. Social classes are used in the United States to rank people in our social hierarchy. The social class you are in is affected by your socioeconomic status, gender, age, and race. Race and gender are permanent, but even though people can change many of their other aspects most people will remain in the same class. I attribute this to people not having the same opportunities to move into a new social class. For example, we all know that in order to become established and be placed in higher ranking class you must go to school because that is how people make the most money. However, people who live in poverty can’t afford school therefore it is hard for them to move up in the social hierarchy the ranking of classes.
Ranking people in social hierarchies increases the gap of equality. People assume that social hierarchy is a biological principle, or they have an individualistic view that they worked for and deserve their ranking, and therefore they accept it as part of life. This also creates more inequality because it makes people think they are not smart and they accept this because they see it as being their fault. These hierarchies often lead to negative adaptations to survive in poverty. The book Cultural Anthropology: A Problem Based Approach, talks about Puerto Ricans building their own economic system that is supported by drugs in order to survive. This not only happens here in America but also in many third world countries. The gap between the rich and poor is so large in third world countries that people have no choice but to get involved with illegal things such as drugs, human trafficking, and corruption. Learning about social hierarchies is relevant to my everyday life because it is important to acknowledge that we still live in a society that is not equal and in order to change this we must acknowledged that it is a problem. As a nursing major social hierarchies will be addressed at work, with patients and staff. Knowing about these hierarchies will help me treat everyone fairly.
Throughout the class I learned about all the little aspects that contribute to us being a society. Even though societies see things differently I can still relate to aspects of their culture and now I understand why people have different believes and how they are acquired. I think our society has made huge progress when it come to inequality but there are still many improvement needed. After learning about other societies and the aspects that increase inequality, I believe we still have to overcome the less emphasized aspects that make a huge part of the inequality, such as gender, race and class, so that we can finally overcome it. Through the readings I also realized that even though people see America as being very diverse and open to changes, in some other societies the people have better developed ideas of how a society should work. For example with gender, women may be able to have the same jobs as men but in usually women still make less than men. In many other cultures gender roles can be overcome but in America those gender roles still exist and it’s unfortunate that it impacts our children. From now on I will try to view things like a cultural anthropologist would, be a blank slate, and learn from others with assumption of what they believe is true.

The Bunnies Revenge

Women of the United States of America tend to have strong feelings about their appearance. It is apparent that in U.S. culture a women's appearance means a lot. Women are constantly being pushed by the media into thinking that they need to look like a model and dress a certain way to be attractive; which is impossible for most women, and even those that do reach the physical ideal are rarely satisfied. Our culture tells us that we need to follow certain norms to be attractive. Most people subject themselves to these ideals.
A couple of weeks ago I attended a party called The Bunnies Revenge, the name referring to the Playboy Bunny. The people who went to this party were supposed to dress up in lingerie. I was surprised by how far people took the theme, some dressing in only in revealing underwear and bras. Is it appropriate to have occasions where it is the norm for people to dress scandalously? I seemed to feel it wasn’t, I felt that it was skanky and wrong, but looking back I am not sure why I felt that way. I had another obligation that night which wasn’t over until after the party had started, so I didn’t have the opportunity to dress up, but I probably wouldn’t have anyways. I’m not sure the reason that I labeled the party as skanky. It could have been because that is really how I felt, or because I felt too insecure with my body to dress up myself so I labeled the people who did to make myself feel better.
Because I didn’t dress up, I felt out of place at the party. One of my friends was disappointed that I hadn’t dressed up and confronted me about it, which made me feel even more out of place. I explained to her that I didn’t have time to get dressed up to the party’s theme. It was apparent that we have different views and morals when it comes to modesty and sexuality. She seemed to feel very comfortable and was enjoying the occasion. I not only would have felt very uncomfortable if I had dressed up, but I even felt uncomfortable being in the presence of those who had.
I believe that the cause for me feeling uncomfortable at the party was due to the fact that I grew up in America, where people are ultimately influenced into feeling insecure about themselves. The media constantly exploits women, by only using tall, skinny, attractive models, and using computer technology to make them even more physically “flawless”. It is because of this that women create idols from the media, and they are bound to be let down, as it is near impossible to achieve a body like most of whom are on television.
The U.S. makes it even more difficult for American women to feel satisfied by making them overweight. We live in a busy, capitalistic society in which people are constantly moving. It is a stressful environment, in which many people take out their stress by eating junk food. If people found new ways to take out their stress, such as working out, it would help fix the problem of insecurity of ones body. There aren’t any advertisements for healthy food or exercise, only the unhealthy and processed foods, and meal portion size is out of control! Big corporations are running our country more than the government itself and, unlike the government, they are only seeking money and don’t make the well being of its citizens a priority. For example, when the dairy industry put out the “Got Milk” advertisements, they influenced the Food Pyramid, and got schools to sell certain dairy products, all in order to get kids hooked on milk for their lifetime. It is because of the dairy industry that people think dairy is healthy, but in truth it is just making the U.S. more unhealthy. So ultimately the media is telling us we need to be skinny and physically perfect, and it’s also getting us fat, and therefore we become unsatisfied and insecure with our bodies because we don’t have the ideal body.
One of my friends who is heavier, attended the party and dressed in lingerie. She told me afterwords that she felt extremely uncomfortable. I believe the reason that she dressed up, knowing that she would feel uncomfortable, was because she felt she had to. She may have found it difficult to decide whether to feel like an outsider because she didn’t dress up, or to dress up and feel uncomfortable with her body.
I don’t think that it’s necessarily a bad thing that people show skin, i just feel that it is inappropriate in that environment. It can be okay for people to show skin in a nonsexual environment, and possibly even good for their self esteem. I feel that it’s even okay for people to show a little sexuality with other people around. The problem comes when the two are combined. I feel that it is only appropriate for people to show skin and be sexual at the same time, when one is in private with their lover.
The Bunnies Revenge was an interesting environment in which most of the women dressed up but none of the men did. I felt that it was not fair that the women felt obligated to dress up but the men did not, as this was clearly a themed party. This is an example of a still existing double standard between men and women. Why are women exposing their bodies but the men aren’t held to the same standard? It’s amazing to me that women tolerate this.
Often the reason that women dress skimpy do so out of low self esteem. Often they are desperate for sexual attention, so they imitate what they see in the media. Many experience that they will get more attention but not the type that they want from dressing in provocative ways. They should be taught that to be treated like a lady, one must dress like a lady. To get respect from men, they must have respect for themselves.
Southern Oregon University’s Erotic Ball is a yearly event that takes place on campus. Students come dressed in very revealing attire to dance, let loose and have fun. At this event both men and women dress provocatively. It is difficult for me to understand why people choose to attend events like this and the Bunnies Revenge party.
I think that our society is changing the way women think. Although there were many skimpily dressed women at this party, many felt the same way that I feel. Hopefully change will occur throughout the nation, ending the exploitation of women in the media and restricting big corporations influence on people. Hopefully the double standards for men versus women will be a thing of the past. Like all change that happens in our culture, it will take time for this to occur. I have met many strong women and think that we have begun to see positive change already in Ashland. These women are not ones that will dress or eat to meet the norms. These are women that take pride in their healthy eating and enjoy their individuality in dressing how they feel comfortable. They will not be snowballed by the media.
Robbins explains in the book Cultural Anthropology: A Problem Based Approach, that “We are not born with an identity, it is something that we learn”(pp.216). In our society people are told that they need to be skinny and to dress in derogatory ways, but also tells them to be lazy and to eat junk food. The majority of women on television and magazines are tall, skinny, blonde and dress a certain way. These people have become the idols for the women of the United States. These messages contradict each other, which causes women to feel insecure about their selves. Here in Ashland, many people are starting to take a stand against these things by attempting to cut media, processed foods, and materialism out of their lives.
I’m still not sure if parties like the Bunnies Revenge and the Erotic Ball are a good thing or a bad thing, all I know is that they make me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps they are a revolt against the media and society. If they are, they will probably die down as the media and big corporations become more regulated. Until that happens, it is important that people do not subject to the messages that the big corporations are sending us. References

Robbins, R. Cultural Anthropology: A Problem Based Approach. Fifth Edition.


McDougall, MD. Marketing Milk and Disease. 2008
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2398866507129480161&hl=en#


Yahoo! Answers. Resolved Question.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100416130212AAQiBkg